Carol's Christmas Challenge 2017

I have an idea for a Christmas display with one of my robots. I challenge the rest of you to beat mine!
Mine should be ready for unveiling before Turkey Day just like the decorations in the stores!
Must use at least some Parallax parts in it. My old display is getting....well....old.

Comments

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you."

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you."

I can only participate if you rename this thread "Christmas Carol Challenge."

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you."

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you."

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you."

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you."

Related: There may be a red & green laser project in my future. Ho ho ho!

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you."

Love lasers! I have wanted to try making a laser light show but can't afford good enough lasers for it.
One of the electronic kit makers used to have a kit with rotating mirrors that would throw the light around
in patterns but I never bought it. Should have. My Christmas project is going to use the Arlo robot.
Maybe for Halloween next year a giant flame throwing pumpkin mounted to an Arlo. Just had a thought!
I wonder if those house laser displays can be hacked and reconfigured? Will have to check one out next time
I go to Home Depot to see how they are made.

Carol I made one of those spinning mirror laser shows back in the early 1990's with a surplus He-Ne laser and three DC motors and round mirrors. Back then the laser was the tentpole, but today it's the rest of it, because you can get a laser diode from Electronics Goldmine for a dollar or so that's better than that He-Ne laser. You can also use any cheap readily available laser pointer. It's a really fun and now cheap project you can do in a few hours.

But those are one color lasers. I would need several colors. How did your spinning laser kit work? Were
you able to make cool effects with it? I have small laser for robot navigation I could use and one of those
big Heathkit lasers from the old days. My husband actually used it to mark where we put a fence on the
property!

Turkey day! I did not think of that! This is an equal opportunity thread, please post here.
I already have a quick idea for a turkey-bot. Will have to wait till Monday as I am getting
ready for a robot demonstration at the Issaquah CC tomorrow. If anybody is in the Seattle
area come and see me and Arlo the mobile Camera platform. Including a bunch of stuff I
did combining Blocklyprop with Minds-i parts and a whole mess of BOE-Bots doing different
things. The show is being put on by a group called Galaxaar.com and I will be in the Seattle
Robotics Society booth.

The spinning laser rig is basically a light spirograph. It makes trippy patterns you don't have much control over. It is a neat thing though, easy to build and fun to play with. I left mine with a *cough* party in the late 1990's and they ran the battery down watching it on what I was assured were a wide array of psychedelic assistants. All you have to do is mount a mirror on the shaft of a DC motor slightly tilted, so that if a beam hits it the reflection will spin. Aim the laser at two or three of them in succession and you get neat patterns on the wall.

If you want to make deliberate patterns it gets expensive fast, and if you want to make those patterns in colors it gets like five figures expensive even at the hobby level. Again it's not so much the lasers; lasers are cheap now, even RGB lasers, even high power lasers that can cut holes in cardboard. What's expensive now is the steering controls. The hardware for that hasn't changed much since 1990; it was expensive then, and it still is. The lasers are cheaper and the computer to run the show are cheaper but whipping those mirrors around in milliseconds in a guided manner still requires some pretty nontrivial hardware.

Fry's had their Starshower on sale for $35 on Friday, your choice of all green or red & green.

I DIY'ed my own 2 years ago. I got a nice big aluminum green laser pointer, 18650 powered from Ebay for maybe $5. It came with a removeable diffraction grating car that pivoted. It throws out the multi-beam star effect for free. I slapped a gear and a motor on it and presto. Poor Man's Starshower. Adding a red one would be extra festive this year.

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you."

Off the Xmas subject a bit but I am going to give a demonstration of several ActivityBots using Blocklyprop in order to introduce the students in the SRS workshop robot classes to Blocklyprop so they can choose whether to program an Ardiuno robot or a Propeller robot. Trying to make it a little more interesting I came up with this Halloween robot in order to show how you can multitask better with the propeller. I need to slow it down a little, change the color sequence to something more attractive, cover the green power lights and come up with something spookier sounding than the piezo speakers. I have a Veho speaker but that might be too big with the skull on there too. I also need to cover the wheels with something to make them quieter and next time make my video in a bigger space! Made my hubby lay down on floor to take the video. Anybody have a suggestion for the spookier noise?

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you."